s created at all, Old Frog and Old Badger lived alone
together. Old Badger wanted to drink, so Old Frog gnawed into a tree,
drew out all the sap and put it in a hollow place. Then he created
Little Frogs to help him, and working together they dug out the lake.
Then Old Frog made the little flat whitefish. Some of them lived in the
lake, but others swam down Cache Creek, and turned into the salmon,
pike, and sturgeon which swim in the Sacramento.
The Great Fire
Patwin (Sacramento Valley, Cal.)
Long ago a man loved two women and wished to marry both of them. But the
women were magpies and they laughed at him. Therefore the man went to
the north, and made for himself a tule boat. Then he set the world on
fire, and himself escaped to sea in his boat.
But the fire burned with terrible speed. It ate its way into the south.
It licked up all things on earth, men, trees, rocks, animals, water, and
even the ground itself.
Now Old Coyote saw the burning and the smoke from his place far in the
south, and he ran with all his might to put it out. He put two little
boys in a sack and ran north like the wind. He took honey-dew into his
mouth, chewed it up, spat on the fire, and so put it out. Now the fire
was out, but there was no water and Coyote was thirsty. So he took
Indian sugar again, chewed it up, dug a hole in the bottom of the creek,
covered up the sugar in it, and it turned to water and filled the creek.
So the earth had water again.
But the two little boys cried because they were lonesome, for there was
nobody left on earth. Then Coyote made a sweat house, and split a number
of sticks, and laid them in the sweat house over night. In the morning
they had all turned into men and women.
Origin of the Raven and the Macaw
(Totems of summer and winter)
Zuni (New Mexico)
The priest who was named Yanauluha carried ever in his hand a staff
which now in the daylight was plumed and covered with feathers--yellow,
blue-green, red, white, black, and varied. Attached to it were shells,
which made a song-like tinkle. The people when they saw it stretched out
their hands and asked many questions.
Then the priest balanced it in his hand, and struck with it a hard
place, and blew upon it. Amid the plumes appeared four round things-mere
eggs they were. Two were blue like the sky and two dun-red like the
flesh of the Earth-mother.
Then the people asked many questions.
"These," said the priests, "are the seed
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